FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2020

Volume 7, Number 32

EIR Daily Alert Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• The Fight Against the Coup Is Yet To Be Won, Requiring LaRouche’s Four Laws and Fighting Spirit
• State of the Coup Unveiled as Roger Stone’s Jury Blows Up, and Barr Presses On
• Trump Proposes Bigger Nuclear Power Budget
• U.S. Senate Votes Up a ‘Iran War Powers’ Resolution, Faces Likely Veto
• Fed’s Jerome Powell Misled Congress, denied Financial Danger
• Guzman Tells Argentine Congress, ‘Asphyxiating’ IMF Debt Is Unpayable; First We Have To Grow
• Epidemiologist Argues, U.S. Must Mobilize Public Health To Face Novel Coronavirus
• Beijing Brings in PLA, Deploys Irradiation in Fight Against Coronavirus Epidemic
• China Radio International Cites Helga Zepp-LaRouche Slamming Anti-China Racism From Media
• UN Secretariat Would Welcome Summit of UN Security Council Permanent Members
• Putin and Erdogan Discuss Idlib Situation by Phone, as U.S. and Turkish Officials Also Meet
• Italian Senate Votes for Trial Against Salvini

EDITORIAL

The Fight against the Coup Is Yet To Be Won, Requiring LaRouche’s Four Laws and Fighting Spirit

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—When millions of Americans celebrated victory over the attempt to bring down their President by impeachment, they should have been celebrating the fighting spirit of Lyndon LaRouche, and taking the ideas he left, for what to do next to save the nation.

The coup against President Donald Trump was set off by British intelligence and City of London financial elites, as LaRouchePAC presented the evidence in 2017 and the President’s choicest supporters came to understand. The British House of Lords publicly declared a Trump second term a grave danger to the British Empire, after British intelligence had failed in an all-out effort to deny him a first term or to shorten it.

That financial imperium declared Lyndon LaRouche its “dangerous” enemy in 1971, when he came to public prominence calling London’s destruction of Roosevelt’s Bretton Woods system by its name—fascist economics—and exploded its defenses in a debate before hundreds of professors and college students in New York City. He was its foremost adversary for 50 years, fighting for breakthrough technologies like fusion energy and the greatest economic development projects all over the world. He fought for the sovereignty of the United States of America and its Presidency, and through his campaigns defended the Presidency against British manipulation.

LaRouche would never have “declared victory” and rested now. He designed already in 2014, in “four economic laws,” precisely the actions we need to take, with impeachment defeated, declare we’ll have no Malthus, no “green new deals” the British Royals love. LaRouche proved, with the American System of economics, there are no limits to growth. A crash effort to return to the Moon and develop it in order to go to Mars—that, President Trump has already challenged the Congress with. That means another big American scientific effort, to master fusion power to propel the rockets and power a new economic infrastructure on Earth. Legislation for it has just passed in New Jersey—spread it.

And Wall Street’s megabanks, the City of London’s creatures, have to be broken up with a Glass-Steagall Act before their speculations trigger another crash.

President Trump has said, fight this coup so that the unbridled attacks on his Presidency, will never happen to another. That fight means exonerating Lyndon LaRouche, who was target number one of these coup plotters for decades.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

State of the Coup Unveiled as Roger Stone’s Jury Blows Up, and Barr Presses On

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—Today’s Roger Stone story is not about Attorney General Bill Barr intervening to prevent a legal atrocity—a 9-year prison sentence for a first-time non-violent offender, which everyone admits is grossly excessive and not countenanced in any similar case.  The revised Department of Justice recommendation is for three years at most, a pragmatic move aimed, many say, at paving the way to a presidential pardon, but still, completely unjust. Rather, it appears that the calculated move by four Mueller-era prosecutors, who resigned after Barr prevented their sentencing plan from proceeding, has backfired and the blowback endangers the entire Stone prosecution.

Tomeka Hart, the foreperson of Stone’s Washington, D.C. District Court jury, came forward on Facebook to defend the four Mueller Stone prosecutors, saying she just could not keep “quiet,” because they were so absolutely wonderful and were being abused. Subsequent investigations into her other social media posts revealed that she was a complete Russiagate/Robert Mueller partisan who hated the President and believed that anyone who supported him was a racist. Even while sitting on the jury, Hart was tweeting the New York Times, urging them to use more direct language in accusing Trump of committing crimes in his dealings with Ukraine.  According to Fox News, in January of 2019, she retweeted a post by Bakari Sellers that “Roger Stone has y’all talking about reviewing use of force guidelines,” before she suggested that “racism was the reason” for all the attention Stone’s brutal arrest had received from conservatives.

Otherwise, it has been widely reported that the DOJ is investigating the origins of Ukrainegate and that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Pittsburgh has been assigned to investigate Rudy Giuliani’s claims and documents. It seems clear that the outrageous sentencing memo on Stone was a stunt deliberately designed to provoke Barr’s necessary reaction and create the current outrage against him and calls for his impeachment. The objective is to prevent a full investigation of Russiagate and Ukrainegate in which the Democrats, the media, and the British-seeded intelligence community remain dangerously targeted and exposed.

Trump Proposes Bigger Nuclear Power Budget

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—“U.S. President Donald Trump has boosted the budget for nuclear energy and security for Fiscal Year 2021,” reported Future Power Technology online monthly on Feb. 12. Trump allocated $19.8 billion in his proposed Energy Department budget for national nuclear security, and $1.2 billion for nuclear energy research and development. The previous fiscal year’s proposal for nuclear R&D had been $824 million.

The magazine quoted from the budget document: “Nuclear energy is also critical to the Nation’s energy mix and the Budget supports an array of programs to advance nuclear energy technologies. This portfolio promotes revitalization of the domestic industry and the ability of domestic technologies to compete abroad.”

Some $259 million is assigned to funding for the Versatile Test Reactor, a fast-neutron test reactor to be developed by 2026. An additional $150 million is to build a uranium reserve.

U.S. Senate Votes Up a ‘Iran War Powers’ Resolution, Faces Likely Veto

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—The U.S. Senate voted up an “Iran War Powers” Resolution today, which prevents President Donald Trump from attacking Iran without Congressional approval. The resolution was introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) in January, after President Trump ordered the Jan. 3 drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani shortly after he had arrived in Iraq. Action on the resolution was postponed while the Senate took up impeachment.

Today the resolution passed by a 55-45 vote, although President Trump opposed it. Eight Republicans voted for it, including Trump allies Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). Other Republicans who voted for it include: Sens. Lamar Alexander (TN), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Todd Young (IN), Bill Cassidy (LA) and Jerry Moran (KS).

A resolution passed by the House in January would not have been binding, and therefore the difference between the two bills would have to be reconciled before an act can be sent to the President for signature.  It is likely the President would veto it, which could only be overturned by a two-third vote in both chambers. While both bills passed with bipartisan votes, neither was close to two-thirds majority.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Fed’s Jerome Powell Misled Congress, Denied Financial Danger

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—The New York Federal Reserve today saw the most heavily oversubscribed of its liquidity loan operation in the five months since it began after the crisis in the troubled interbank lending market developed. In the process of bailing out that crisis, it has driven the U.S. stock market to the highest levels relative to GDP in U.S. history, and is continuing to drive it up day after day until it crashes.

The Fed made $30 billion in two-day repurchase (“repo”) loans, yet had an additional $29.8 billion demand unmet. It also made overnight liquidity loans of an additional $48.5 billion.

Pam and Russ Martens, in their “Wall Street on Parade” blog, point out what that means: 1) at least one Wall Street trading house is in a liquidity crisis, and primary dealer banks are unable/unwilling to offer it help; and 2) the fact that this liquidity is massively going into hedge funds—either directly or through intermediary bank lenders with a big markup—and that the hedge funds are using it to speculate in equities futures and derivatives, is the cause of the soaring markets.

Since the 2008 crash, the share of the wealthiest 10% of Americans in these stock markets has also soared, to 84%. Households headed by “millennials,” in particular, have very little wealth in stocks or otherwise. But the presence of rising stocks in Americans’ 401k and other retirement savings accounts, induces some to accept that the stock markets indicate a growing economy.

Meanwhile American Banker reported today regulators’ great concern that banks already own far too much corporate leveraged-loan debt, which they fear will blow up on these banks in the first downturn—already essentially underway. The Fed announced it will have to stress-test banks for leveraged loans this year for the first time.

Yet Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell went before House and Senate on Feb. 11 and 12, and gave what one press report described as a claim that “the U.S. economy is in a more or less perfect condition.” There is nothing, Powell said, that needs to be fixed—with one exception: The Federal budget should be cut to reduce fiscal deficits, particularly the healthcare entitlement programs.

Guzman Tells Argentine Congress, ‘Asphyxiating’ IMF Debt Is Unpayable; First We Have To Grow

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—On the same day the International Monetary Fund arrived in Argentina to begin negotiations with the Alberto Fernández government on the $44 billion debt owed the Fund, Finance Minister Martin Guzman laid out in an address to Congress the stark reality of the country’s economic crisis and why payment to the IMF is impossible today. In order to begin growing and make payments by 2024, as the government is proposing, Argentina must get “out from under the debt burden that is asphyxiating us,” Guzman told gathered legislators, trade unionists, Church officials and others.

Guzman outlined an “anguished” situation, caused by four years of IMF policy imposed by former President Mauricio Macri. He presented shocking details of the growth of debt over just the past two years—from 52% to 88% of GDP—the dramatic drop in exports, the growth in poverty from 28.5% to 35.4%—“and still growing”—uncontrolled inflation, industry operating only at 60% of installed capacity, etc. He explained, the debt is “unsustainable,” and requires a “deep” restructuring. Our outlook is “not optimistic, but realistic.”

Because the government is engaged in negotiations, Guzman said he would not reveal details of its macroeconomic program, but affirmed that it is been carefully thought out. He emphasized that austerity is not possible in a situation of recession; nor is any reduction in the fiscal deficit in 2020. The IMF is responsible for the country’s debt and economic crisis, as are those Argentine leaders who allowed insane debt growth. The IMF loan to Argentina was the largest in the nation’s history, “which wasn’t used to increase the country’s productive capacity, but rather to pay debt and [abet] capital flight.” He also blamed bondholders who bet on the failed IMF model and charged huge interest rates to cover themselves.

Guzman warned those bondholders they will be “frustrated” when “difficult” restructuring talks, requiring a “haircut,” begin. “We’re not going to allow foreign investment funds to set the guidelines for our macroeconomic policy.”

The Finance Minister also echoed statements by Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner last week, when she called for a “Never Again” policy to stop the constant cycles of indebtedness that have plagued Argentina for years. He said: “This is a process in which we all have to decide whose side we’re on. We’ve already said that we’re on the side of the [Argentine] people…. It’s time to turn the page, and lay the basis for there to be a ‘Never Again’ to the cycles of overindebtedness.”

BIOLOGICAL THREAT

Epidemiologist Argues, U.S. Must Mobilize Public Health To Face Novel Coronavirus

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—American epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota and writer/filmmaker Mark Olshaker co-authored in a Washington Post op-ed today that the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is likely in the process of becoming a global pandemic, and that the United States must mobilize to produce public health resources it does not have, to meet it. Osterholm said the virus “is spreading like the influenza virus does each winter,” a spread which we have never been able to stop. Therefore healthcare workers must be protected and given the tools—which the U.S. healthcare system does not currently have—to care for patients and slow the virus’s spread.

One example is protective masks and suits, of which China is the leading world producer, but China is fighting to meet its own demand, they write. Another is special hospital facilities able to treat large numbers and to stop the virus’s spread to medical and other workers in hospitals. Osterholm and Olshaker write that “orders over the past several weeks of N95 respirators—the tight-fitting face masks necessary for protection against the virus—would take many years of [existing] manufacturing capacity to fulfill…. Governments must support private-sector manufacturers in providing N95s and other equipment to front-line health-care providers and other essential workers.”

Dr. Osterholm and Olshaker co-authored Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs in 2017, in the wake of the swine flu, Ebola, MERS, SARS, and other epidemics, and explore the resources and programs necessary to defend ourselves, as they argue, the “threat of a disastrous influenza pandemic looms ever larger.”

The same day as Osterholm and Olshaker’s warning was published, China’s Hubei Province, where Wuhan is the capital, suddenly counted 14,800 more infections, triggering worldwide headlines that the epidemic is accelerating. In fact, Hubei officials, now having the facilities and manpower to treat far more patients, changed their metric to include “clinically diagnosed cases” and “suspected cases,” who were not previously getting treatment. They also reported 263 more deaths. The epidemic is not necessarily accelerating; but it is larger than previously reported. U.S. NIH Director of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci said he thought the COVID-19 mortality rate could come down to about 1% when all cases are found, particularly since children seem least affected.

China is continuing to mobilize resources effectively—2,600 more military medical personnel went to Wuhan today, the mask production rate has doubled, etc. A World Health Organization representative in China said, “the numbers that would have happened without such measures would have been much higher. These measures have reduced the peak of the epidemic.”

But voluntarily, Chinese businesses large and small are very slowly returning to work in the third week of complete or partial shutdown of 75% of the Chinese economy. Its first-quarter economic growth may be zero to 2%, which will impact—and is impacting—every economy in the world. The International Energy Agency has already reported world oil demand is contracting for the first time since the global financial crash.

U.S. new tariffs on Chinese goods should all have been lifted by now, at least provisionally. More important, the other major economies need to coordinate to mobilize investment in new infrastructure and manufacturing capability, domestically and in third countries.

Beijing Brings in PLA, Deploys Irradiation in Fight against Coronavirus Epidemic

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—While medical workers are working 24/7 to help contain the COVID-19 disease in Hubei Province, which remains the epicenter of the coronavirus spread, there is still a dearth of medical personnel and lack of equipment. The Chinese government flew 2,600 an additional People’s Liberation Army medical personnel into the province today to support the overworked medical personnel already there. Four thousand PLA medical personnel are already onsite in Wuhan.

Altogether a total of 189 medical teams of 21,569 medical workers have been sent to Hubei from other provinces. Over 7,000 doctors and nurses are from intensive care departments.

The other bottleneck in the fight has been medical equipment, in particular masks and protective suits. With many people having returned to their work places from the Spring Festival, the factories producing these items are now working at 80% capacity. But the demand is great. In order to shorten the process to thoroughly decontaminate the protective gear before shipment, they have turned to irradiation to quickly ready the boxes containing the suits for shipment. The ordinary procedure would take days, while irradiation can be done within hours, thereby considerably increasing turnover.

China Radio International Cites Helga Zepp-LaRouche Slamming Anti-China Racism from Media

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—China Radio International, which is part of the China Media Group, cited Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche in a Feb. 9 Italian language report on anti-China propaganda. After publications such as Germany’s Der Spiegel and Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, and the Wall Street Journal published clearly racist depictions of the coronavirus as somehow “Chinese,” Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche released a statement on Feb. 7: “China Deserves Praise and Cooperation in the Fight against the Coronavirus.”

China Radio International’s Italian report stated: “Some Western politicians and media have deliberately chosen not to see the necessary and urgent measures taken by China for the prevention and control of the epidemic and the important results achieved. They continued to spread false information, even creating a ‘conspiracy theory’ to defame and attack China. This behavior aggravated the panic situation, distorted the country’s efforts in preventing and controlling coronavirus pneumonia, violated the rights of Chinese residents abroad and of people of Asian origin, seriously damaging international cooperation in the fight against contagion.

“Days ago, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and president of Schiller Institute, a German think-tank, questioned the opinions expressed by the media of some countries of Europe and America, and considers that they were using the coronavirus pneumonia to spread racism in the pretext of defending ‘Western values.’ ”

The Italian CRI report occurs amid hostile acts against the Chinese citizens and the Chinese community in Italy, which prompted the medical official of the P.R.C. Embassy in Rome, Dr. Zhang, to release a statement: “In the Chinese community panic is spreading, not because of the coronavirus epidemic, but because of security. There have been acts of aggression against Chinese in Italy, not tourists, but the Chinese community. I want to invite our Italian friends to help protect the safety of our fellow citizens who live and work in Italy: avoiding prejudice, ostracism, aggression. Insults and threats are not tolerable.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

UN Secretariat Would Welcome Summit of UN Security Council Permanent Members

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—The UN Secretary General’s official spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Feb. 12 that the UN Secretariat would welcome a summit of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which are also the founding members of the United Nations: Russia, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and China. “We would welcome any meeting of Security Council permanent members which we hope would lead to increased cooperation between those five countries in the Security Council,” he said, in reply to a question from TASS, yesterday.

Dujarric did not reply to a question on whether the Russian side had requested the UN Secretary General to organize such a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s high-level week in September, which also marks the 75th anniversary of the General Assembly. This would be interesting, since Russian President Vladimir Putin has already confirmed he will speak at the General Assembly (UNGA) in September, and since China and France have already voiced support for the initiative, President Donald Trump would only need to fly to New York.

On Feb. 11, Pyotr Ilyichev, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of International Organizations, told journalists that organizing a meeting of this kind on the sidelines of the UNGA September debate is “what comes to mind,” but he also said that no concrete agreements have so far been reached.

On Jan. 6, Helga Zepp-LaRouche issued a statement demanding an emergency summit of the United States, Russia and China, to address the strategic conjuncture, in the wake of the U.S. assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. On Jan. 15, in his nationally televised presidential address to the Federal Assembly, President Vladimir Putin urged “The founding countries of the United Nations should set an example. It is the five nuclear powers that bear a special responsibility for the conservation and sustainable development of humankind. These five nations should first of all start with measures to remove the prerequisites for a global war and develop updated approaches to ensuring stability on the planet….” He repeated his proposal more publicly in Jerusalem on Jan. 23.

Putin and Erdogan Discuss Idlib Situation by Phone, as U.S. and Turkish Officials Also Meet

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone on Feb. 12 to discuss “various aspects of activities aimed at resolving the Syrian crisis, focusing on the situation in the Idlib de-escalation zone and the need to fully implement Russian-Turkish agreements, including the [Sochi] memorandum of September 17, 2018,” the Kremlin reported. The telephone call had been initiated by Ankara.

Erdogan obviously wants an end to the Syrian Arab Army offensive against the Syrian terrorists Turkey is backing, but it did not seem Putin gave Erdogan the response he desired. He is being put between a rock and a hard place. Following the call, Ankara announced that, “Today, our President held a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This time, our delegation will visit Moscow. [Earlier] a Russian delegation visited Ankara and held meetings twice,” said Mevlüt Çavusoglu said at a joint news conference in Tirana with Albanian Foreign Minister Gent Cakaj, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

Moreover, Turkey’s Deputy Defense Minister Yunus Emre Karaosmanoglu met on Feb. 12 with U.S. Special Envoy for Syria James Jeffrey and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Michael Satterfield in Ankara on Feb. 12, to discuss regional security issues, especially the situation in Idlib province. Karaosmanoglu called for concrete steps to be taken on Idlib and that the U.S. should end its support, including arms and ammunition, for the Turkish and Syrian Kurdish PKK-KCK/YPG terrorists.

Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar met with U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on the sidelines of the NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting in Brussels, on Feb. 12, also to discuss the need for “concrete steps” by both the U.S. and NATO on Idlib, it was reported.

Akar also met with Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos in Brussels and agreed to hold talks later this month on confidence-building measures. Delegations from the two countries will hold talks in Athens from Feb. 17-21. Akar and Panagiotopoulos also underlined the importance of keeping dialogue channels open between the two countries.

OTHER

Italian Senate Votes for Trial Against Salvini

Feb. 13 (EIRNS)—Italy’s Lega party leader Matteo Salvini will go on trial, the Italian Senate decided yesterday in a majority vote of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Democratic Party (PD). Salvini is accused of kidnapping and other crimes in the case of an Italian coast guard ship with migrants on board, which was kept for four days off the port of Augusta, Sicily, in July 2019, before its disembarkation was authorized.

The trial is politically motivated and Salvini himself compared it to the impeachment coup attempt against U.S. President Donald Trump. Salvini was sued by a leftist environmentalist group, Legambiente. Prosecutors filed a request for acquittal but the judge decided for a trial and asked the Senate to lift Salvini’s parliamentary immunity. The relevant committee voted against lifting his immunity, but the Senate membership yesterday voted in favor. Lega Senators left the room before the vote.

There are other potential legal cases against Salvini: A similar case concerning a Spanish NGO ship, Open Arms, occurred in August last year; and a defamation suit filed by attorneys for Extinction Rebellion activist and German ship captain Carola Rackete.

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